


Slumber

by TheGreatGame



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Cuddling, Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7812700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatGame/pseuds/TheGreatGame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em> I can never move from this spot, </em>the Doctor decided. <em> I guess this is my life now. </em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Slumber

It had been a very tiring day. There hadn’t been any running away from monsters, or foiling evil schemes, but there had been a very long, very strenuous hike through an alien countryside. The Doctor had skipped through woods and over hills like it was nothing, but his human companions were feeling quite exhausted. The instant they had gotten back to the TARDIS, Victoria had announced that she was going to bed. The Doctor told Jamie that maybe he should go to bed as well, but the Scot had insisted that he was fine and that he felt like watching a movie that the Doctor had mentioned to him that morning. The Doctor hadn’t been too sure about Jamie’s decision, but set up the movie anyway in the TARDIS media room.

They had only watched twenty minutes of it when Jamie started to fall asleep. 

The Doctor was aware that Jamie had gradually been slumping more and more against him during the past few minutes, but he thought that it was only because Jamie was feeling particularly cuddly that night. Of course, the Doctor didn’t mind at all. The Doctor slipped his arm around Jamie and held him closer, and he smiled when the Scot’s head rested against his shoulder.

Then, Jamie let out a wee snore and the Doctor finally realized what had happened.

“Jamie?” he dared to whisper.

Jamie snuffled, soft and quick, before adjusting his head in his sleep. His hair brushed against the Doctor’s neck as well as his breath, slow and deep, and the Doctor found that he couldn’t move.

_Oh. Oh dear._

The Doctor’s eyes darted across the room, looking for some kind of answer to his predicament, maybe even from the TARDIS itself. The movie’s volume, he noticed, had lowered to a whisper. 

_He can’t just stay here all night. He needs a proper rest, in a proper bed, not a prolonged snuggle on this sofa._

Automatically, his hand softly petted Jamie’s side, and the Scot sleepily wriggled into the soothing touch.

_Although, that wouldn’t be too terrible a thing_ , the Doctor realized with a grin.

The Doctor shook the thought out of his head. No. No, he must wake Jamie up somehow. No matter how charming or sweet he looks when he’s sleeping.

However, before the Doctor could act upon his newly-made decision, he discovered something about Jamie that he hadn’t known, or noticed, before. Jamie had a tendency to hug the nearest thing to him while he slept, be it a pillow, a clump of blankets, or a flustered and cuddly Time Lord. Before the Doctor could unwrap himself from Jamie and wake him up, the young man wearily dragged his arm over the Doctor and, without waking, held him in a soft, yet firm embrace. Another light snore reached the Doctor’s ear and he turned to get a closer look at his companion’s sleeping face. He found that he couldn’t stop looking at it. 

_I can never move from this spot_ , the Doctor decided. _I guess this is my life now._

The Doctor rubbed his side again. Jamie made another small noise, his eyebrows scrunching for a split second before returning to blissful slumber.

The Doctor couldn’t help but make a small happy noise as he resigned himself to his fate.

*

The Doctor wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He couldn’t judge by how long the movie had been on- he had switched it off a while ago. It might have been twenty minutes, or thirty, or an hour, before Victoria walked into the room and he woke up. He was surprised to find that he had fallen asleep. 

“Doctor? I-”

“ _Shh_.” The Doctor gestured to Jamie with the gentlest of nods. “He’s sleeping,” he whispered, as if that wasn’t obvious. He noticed Victoria’s weary eyes and the fact that she was in her pajamas. “And I think you should be sleeping as well.”

Victoria decided not to be too surprised at the sight of Jamie curled up over the Doctor as he slept- he already did that when he was awake- and told the Doctor her predicament.

“I left my bedroom for only a moment,” she whispered, “just to get something I had left in the console room. But when I tried to get back, it was gone!”

“Gone?”

“Yes, gone. It’s not where it normally is, not where it sometimes goes to when the TARDIS isn’t working properly-”

“ _Ahem_.”  
Victoria sighed. “When the TARDIS is _in a bad mood._ ”

The Doctor’s frown vanished, albeit grumpily. He hated it whenever anybody tried to insinuate that his precious time machine wasn’t working properly.

“The point is, I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Well, Victoria, normally I’d be ready to help you with whatever you need, but, erm…” He gestured to Jamie again. “I’m indisposed at the moment.”

“Oh, please, Doctor. Just for a minute.”

The Doctor did something that would’ve made Victoria want to giggle if she wasn’t so exhausted. He pouted in the most absurd fashion and, of all the noises he could have made, _whimpered_ at her.

And that whimper, that noise of the Doctor being upset, woke Jamie up. Jamie opened his eyes with a snort and blinked against the dim light.

“Oh!” The Doctor glared at Victoria. “Now look what you’ve done!”

However, Jamie was only at the midpoint between sleep and the waking world, where people do things that they remember later as dreams, and where people dream and are convinced that their dreams are a reality. He felt the Doctor’s presence at his side, saw Victoria standing before him, and could think of only one thing to do.

He unwrapped one arm from the Doctor and groggily beckoned to her.

Victoria, unsure but curious, cautiously stepped forward until she was leaning towards the Doctor and Jamie. With a speed and strength that she wouldn’t have thought of the half-sleeping Scot, Jamie wrapped his arm around her and pulled her between him and the Doctor. Before Victoria could even protest, he snuggled up alongside her with one arm still wrapped around the Doctor, breathed a happy sigh, and went back to sleep.

Victoria, just like the Doctor before her, couldn’t move. To be fair, she was now squished between her two closest friends, and not uncomfortably so. As she settled into the cuddle group more and more, she felt her earlier worries melting away.

“It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?” said the Doctor.

Victoria nodded, careful not to wake Jamie with her movements.

The Doctor smiled. “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing that this sofa reclines.”

The Doctor draped a blanket, which had appeared on the sofa like magic, over the three of them and snapped his fingers. The lights turned off and the room was drenched in darkness. Victoria didn’t mind. Next to one warm hugging body and one cool loving one, it was hard to be afraid of the dark.

“Good night, Victoria,” said the Doctor.

“Good night, Doctor,” said Victoria. Before she closed her eyes, she placed a soft kiss on Jamie’s brow and said, “Good night, Jamie.”

In the dark, nobody saw Jamie smile in his sleep.


End file.
